Summary
Resources for health care are inevitably limited; thus, it is neces-sary to make decisions on a regular basis, what health care will be reimbursed from the public health insurance, and what care will be behind the limits of possibilities of the particular society. Since 1980s, methods of health technology assessment (HTA) have been developed, and HTA has become a standard policy in evaluating pharmaceuticals worldwide. A desirable application of the same methodology to medical devices appeared ex-tremely difficult, though. A possible solution is an application of the multiple-criteria decision analysis (MCDA). We recommended two MCDA methodologies for completion of HTA studies in med-ical devices, the first suitable for the national regulator, while the other corresponding to the needs of individual hospitals (within so-called hospital-based HTA). The results of the second ap-proach led to an interest in establishing HTA units in large Czech university hospitals. Furthermore, the presented study deals with particular, but important issues concerning HTA in medical de-vices. These include pricing, public procurement, allocation (dif-fusion) across the country and different types of hospitals, and early HTA (definitely interesting for the industry). Thus, the study based on original results of the CzechHTA team from the Faculty of Biomedical Engineering covers all aspects of the technical and economic assessment of medical devices specified for the condi-tions of Czech health care system.